Propagation was spotty and strange all contest. Worked off and on with low power and a vertical (MFJ1798). Worked the Cape Verde Islands and somethings like that but had problems with QSB all day. Also current rig has too good a receiver, its is frustraining to only be able to work 25% of what you hear.

I operate 20 meter single op from Colorado, high power. Last year couldn't hardly hear any Europeans, although East Coast guys seemed to be doing pretty well.

This year much better. 101 countries vs 89 last year, about 50% higher QSO count, and 70% higher score. Lots of Europeans. Didn't hear much from Pacific, some JA's, and a few nice surprises. Good signal strength from Pacific but not that many on. Not much from Africa.

20 meters was really full, a station about every 1 Khz. Tried to do some running, and only slightly successful so mostly stuck to search and pounce.

I picked up about 25 new countries and entities for a new total of 89. This includes Gambia, Senegal (twice!), Nigeria and South Africa. Got about everything in the Caribbean and most of South America including Paraguay finally. Absolutely nothing from Asia or the pacific except for high power JAs.

I got a late start on the contest due to some logging software issues that did not show it's ugly face until one hour prior to the contest. I had to save all the .ini files and then reload from scratch. Once that was done, I started encountering a severe EMI problem, which turned out to be getting into the rigs through a LPT port on the back of an SO2R controller.

Once those issues were resolved, it was off to the races. CQWW SSB is not my favorite due to all the split operation, but I did manage to hold some pretty decent runs on 15 & 20 meters, which was nice.

If the conditions hold, I think this contest season will be one of the best we've had in years. Last year it was very difficult to work EU on 15 except for the few times the band opened, and that seemed to be short lived.

This was really a primer for ARRL SS next week so I did not make a serious effort, but 718 Q's and 600K + points is not bad for a part time operation.

Nice to see that I wasn't the only one to have problems on 20. I live in an apartment, so I am stuck with using an attic dipole and 100 Watts from my 735. I only made about 17 contacts, but I added a few contacts to my DXCC totals that I didn't have before the contest. I just hope that Sweeps will go a little better. Hope to work you all in November if I don't have to work all the time during Sweeps.

I do think band conditions were somewhat more favorable this year than last year. 10 meters was useful to SA and Carribean on Sunday, and 15M was open to EU very nicely for me on Sunday, so it was not all hard work. When everyone is scrunched into 20 meters due to lack of higher band openings, it's a real mess, which was more the case last year.

Copyright 2000-2017 eHam.net, LLC
eHam.net is a community web site for amateur (ham) radio operators around the world.
Contact the site with comments or questions.
WEBMASTER@EHAM.NETSite Privacy Statement